UNC Global

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill affects positive change in people's lives around the world through its leadership in global research, teaching and service. Visit global.unc.edu to learn more.

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Hawking Radiation Conference Proceedings Now Online

The Hawking Radiation Conference held in Stockholm, Sweden, last summer brought together 32 of the world's most renown physicists, including Stephen Hawking (center), to discuss whether singularities in black holes exist and whether Hawking radiation has bearing on their existence. UNC physics professor Laura Mersini-Houghton (center, behind Hawking) convened the conference to tackle this complex question.

You can watch the conference proceedings in full on YouTube: http://ow.ly/ZiUfw Photo by Jann Lipka  

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Remembering Zora Neale Hurston at UNC

Zora Neale Hurston, 1938, photographed by Carl Van Vechten. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, reproduction number, LC-DIG-van-5a52142

A decade before the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill desegregated the law school after a 1951 federal court ruling mandated the admission of black students, Zora Neale Hurston audited a class taught by Paul Green, a playwright and friend of Hurston. This was during her tenure as a professor in the Drama Department at North Carolina College for Negroes (now North Carolina Central University) in Durham, from 1939-40. When a white undergraduate complained about Hurston’s presence on campus, Green moved the class to his home so that Hurston could continue attending.  

Hurston had turned to teaching after finding that she could not make a living from her novels. She had already published the book she would become most known for, Their Eyes Were Watching God, in 1937, but initial reactions to the work were mixed. By the time she moved to North Carolina, Hurston was a seasoned folklorist and anthropologist as well as a writer of plays and novels. She had conducted fieldwork in Jamaica and Haiti, as well as the U.S. South.

The now canonical author’s brief and unofficial association with UNC resurfaced recently in a controversy over the named landscape of the University. Student groups, including the Real Silent Sam Coalition (“Silent Sam” is a Confederate memorial that sits prominently on campus), have for years protested buildings and monuments on campus dedicated to known white supremacists and the comparative lack of markers for people of color and women. High on their list of targets was Saunders Halls, named for former University trustee and North Carolina Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan William Saunders. 

In 2015, protesters’ bid to rename Saunders Hall finally got traction, and their proposed new name—Hurston Hall—garnered support from a number of constituents on campus. To their disappointment, the name chosen by the UNC Board of Trustees was the generic Carolina Hall, which was handed down alongside a sixteen year moratorium on building renaming.

Unofficially, many students and faculty continue to refer to the building by the name Hurston Hall. Hurston’s memory UNC, it seems, will continue to persist off the record, not in attendance rolls or etched in stone. 

Shannon Harvey, Global Relations

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Photos from the Student Action with Farmworkers Collection in the Southern Folklife Collection.

Student Action with Farmworkers (SAF) is a 501c3 non-profit organization founded in 1992 with the mission: “to bring students and farmworkers together to learn about each other’s lives, share resources and skills, improve conditions for farmworkers, and build diverse coalitions working for social change.”

More in this blog post.

From top:

Rolando Rivera, poet, Booneville, N.C., 2001. Photo by Scott Pryor.

Cristina Hernandez and her father, Gonzalo Vitela, at Hernandez’s quinceanera celebration, Smithfield, N.C., June 30, 2001. Photos by Erin Barker.

Ramiro Sarabia, Jr., member of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, holding “¡Hasta La Victoria!” sign at the Mount Olive Pickle Protest, July 1999. Photo by Lori Fernald Khamala and Mendi Drayton.

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If you are on the UNC campus and haven't stepped inside Wilson recently, you should.

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2015 Carolina Southeast Asia Program

Photo by Morgan Pitelka

The 2015 Carolina Southeast Asia Program (SEAS) just wrapped up what looks like an incredible trip through Malaysia, Singapore and Japan. This shot of the Kamo River from their last stop in Kyoto, Japan, is one of many great images gracing their Flickr stream.

SEAS is a unique faculty-led program at UNC that introduces rising sophomores with limited international experience to Southeast Asia, starting with six weeks of study at the National University of Singapore, a key UNC partner institution. This year’s courses took a comparative look at urbanization in the region.

Class of 2019, if you’re interested, there is always Summer 2016!

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¡Hola from Ecuador!

First selfie in Ecuador at Aeropuerto Mariscal Sucre!

We arrived in Quito late Saturday night. Technical difficulties have prevented me from posting until now, and it’s looking like I may have to wait until my return to Chapel Hill to post more photos from Quito. I have a back up plan for the Galapagos, though, so my fingers are crossed!

We had an intense day of touring historic downtown Quito and other sights around the city on Sunday. Today we visited two K-12 schools in Quito that were just minutes apart but in every other way a study in contrasts-- more on the schools later.

We also visited the Universidad San Francisco de Quito and learned about 10,000 years of Ecuadorian history-- in 90 minutes!-- and the many changes the state education system has undergone since 2006. USFQ has a beautiful campus and has been an essential partner in planning this visit. 

While the group has been learning about Ecuadorian history and contemporary politics and issues in the Galapagos, I’ve been learning a ton from my fellow travelers as they talk shop about education in my adopted home of North Carolina. Our group is made up of teachers from public and private K-12 schools, community college professors, principals, a superintendent, librarian, counselor.

Some of their conversations go over my head (what is an IB school? Am I hearing that right? I need to ask someone), and some of it seems so particular to this exact moment in North Carolina’s history and whatever requirements are being phased in and out that it’s only interesting to educators in the thick of it. But I’m finding that the larger issues these small, often seemingly bureacratic matters point to have their parallels here in Ecuador as well.

In Ecuador they are also talking about teacher compensation, investment in education and training students for a global workforce. They worry about inequality of opportunity along class and racial lines and the tension between the democratic impulse to give all kids the same education and the need to shape that education to the culture of each community. How do you increase respect for the teaching profession? How do you quantify what makes a good school?

Tomorrow we fly to Isla San Cristóbal. I’m excited for the next leg of our journey and our upcoming school visits. No doubt each visit will raise more questions.

Shannon Harvey, Global Relations

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Pre-Trip Study

I’ve been reading up on Ecuador before our World View trip. I started with On the Origin of Species, though I’ll admit I’m still wading through carrier pigeons and haven’t yet arrived at the Galapagos. For more contemporary looks at Ecuador and the Islands, I’ve dipped into The Ecuador Reader, published by our friendly rivals up the road, and Galapagos at the Crossroads by Carol Ann Basset.

I’ve been delighted to find so many UNC authors to reference. Science and Conservation in the Galapagos Islands, edited by UNC’s Steve Walsh and USFQ’s Carlos Mena, provides an accessible, interdisciplinary look at the Islands. I've also come across some truly excellent undergraduate work. Students in the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication have an amazing multimedia site, Living Galapagos, that explores a wide variety of social, environmental and economic issues.

Here’s just one great story on Living Galapagos from 2013, featuring farmers Homero and Efigenia Altamirano and their thoughts on agriculture, marriage and life. It’s no wonder why Living Galapagos won a People’s Voice Webby award in 2014.

Shannon Harvey, Global Relations

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Hello! + World View Ecuador Study Visit

We’re thrilled to be kicking off the UNC Global Tumblr with World View! World View equips K-12 and community college educators with global knowledge, best practices and resources to prepare students to live in an interconnected and diverse world.

Over the next few weeks I’ll travel with educators from across North Carolina on a World View study trip to Ecuador. We’ll visit K-12 schools, universities and NGOs in Quito and the Galapagos Islands to learn about the education system, culture, history and environment of Ecuador.

I’m particularly excited to go to Ecuador as UNC-Chapel Hill has deep relationships with university and NGO partners there, including the Universidad San Francisco de Quito. In addition to comparing notes with K-12 educators, we’ll tour the Galapagos Science Center, jointly run by UNC and USFQ, and visit with UNC study abroad groups working on Isla San Cristóbal.  

I’ll be sharing updates and photos over the next few weeks, so stay tuned. In the meantime, here is a photo of the Galapagos Islands’ most famous visitor memorialized in stone, taken on Isla San Cristóbal in June 2014 by Melissa McMurray, international liaison at UNC.

Shannon Harvey, Global Relations